Before I go back into the Cuddle Party, I just wanted to
celebrate the rules a little bit in a different way. As I’ve mentioned, I am
training to be an elementary school teacher, and one of the things I’ve worried
about the most is the amount that kids always want to be touching—it’s cute and
endearing, but it can add up to being too much for me. I’ve given a lot of
thought to ways in which I could carve out some space for myself in the
classroom, so a few weeks ago, I tried a little experiment—I told my students
to ask for hugs. We even practiced it. I said “When you’d like a hug, please
say “Would you like a hug?” to me. I might say no, and that doesn’t mean you’re
bad or I don’t like you, it just means that I’m not feeling huggy.” I tried
this with first graders, and they took to it right away. This is a HUGE load
off my mind—if I can create a friendly, open classroom AND have space for
myself, it will be so awesome.
Anyway, back to the Cuddle Party. When it was almost time
for the welcome circle, I went upstairs to get into my PJs, and ran into Cuddle
Host Two, whom I hadn’t met before. She stopped for a mircrosecond to ask if
she could hug me, and I said sure. She’s a fit, long-haired hippie-ish woman about
my age, maybe a little younger. She had such a smile on her face and a glow in
her cheeks-she looked like a Tantric pin-up girl, all bright eyes and flowy
clothes. She complimented my PJs.
Before the welcome circle, we heard the Lady of the House, a
beautiful, slight-but-strong African American woman (and owner of all the
bi-friendly books, maybe) playing the harmonium and singing a song whose melody
was “Om Shanti.” We all sang along. I Googled “Om Shanti” and found out that it means “peace,” and that
Shanti repeated three times represents the “threefold peace in body, speech and
mind.” (http://www.wildmind.org/mantras/figures/shanti)
As I said in the last post, almost everyone had been in
Tantric workshops all day. You could tell who was new by who wasn’t sensitive
about space—I noticed that a couple of the new guys took up more space than
others did, and felt free to touch without permission. It was a good
opportunity to practice not seeing them as a threat, and being able to make
space for myself.
The first exercise we were to do in the welcome circle was
to practice our “no.” A few weeks go, in Tantric poetry class (I really like
sentences that start that way) we were practicing our yesses and nos and my
yesses sounded great, loud and full and a little defiant, but my nos rang a
little false and hollow. The going wisdom is that your yes can’t mean anything
until you have your no down, so I was glad to get a chance to practice.
“Turn to your left and ask that person if you can kiss him
or her. The gender doesn’t matter. That person’s job is to say “no.” Practice
this three times.”
The guy next to me was adorable enough; he looked like he
had been sent from central casting. In fact, he was a massage therapist and
training to host cuddle parties. He was young, sleekly muscled, and
bright-eyed, with a receding blond halo of close-cropped hair. Too virtuous and
clean-cut for me, so when he asked, “May I kiss you?” it was easy to say “No.”
Easy to say it, but not so easy not to fill the awkward space after it with
nervous quipping. We did a great job with that exercise and he accepted a
high-five. There was lots more no-saying practice, with different partners
offering any number of things—I had a real hard time saying no when the Lady of
the House said:
“May I spank you with that copy of the Divine Androgyne?”
I really hoped that one would come back around after
no-practice was over.
That offer aside, it should be apparent at this point that
Cuddle Parties are not sexy, at least this one wasn’t. They are a way to make
connections, yes, even in a divine way sometimes, but they are more of a way to
create and practice your boundaries. Anything that happens should not just be a
“yes,” but a “hell yes!”—some of us who grew up abused don’t know how to make
boundaries, we feel guilty making space for ourselves. That’s one of the things
I enjoy about BDSM play parties—both within scenes and during downtime, I can
feel about twelve feet of caution-tape safe space around me, and it’s up to me
to decide who comes inside it—that’s very powerful. Like play parties, Cuddle
Parties are a wonderful way to practice feeling safe around bodies in general.
Next: A Very Chaste Threesome